The Mill Brings Pink Partying Elephant to Life for Mr Kipling

Adding to their host of strong character and creature animation work, The Mill’s latest 3D venture sees them team up with JWT to create a fully CG pink elephant for Mr Kipling’s latest spot as part of the ‘Life is Better With Cake’ campaign. 

The charming ad, directed by Bjorn Ruhmann out of Blink, features a young boy sharing a ritual with a playful pink elephant on a summer’s day in the park, before the pair sit down and enjoy a slice of Mr Kipling cake. 

The Mill’s challenge was to create an entirely CG elephant that was full of character and personality, whilst ensuring it maintained a sense of realism featuring every element of detail possible, including wrinkles, skin folds and careful texturing to ensure the skin and hair had a sense of realism in the way they captured every light reflection. 

As well as creating a photo-real model, using a real elephant from Woburn Safari Park named Chandrika as reference, the team had to seamlessly rig and comp the elephant into each live action plate so it could realistically interact with the young boy protagonist. 

Lead 3D artist Jon Wood played a key role in bringing the imaginary creature to life, he comments “This was one of the first CG projects we’ve been involved in wherein we used muscle and skin simulations to recreate the way the underlying physiology of the elephant influences the way its skin slides, bulges and folds. This really helped to give a more real feeling to the way the elephant moves and interacts. We’re immensely proud of the finished product, which marks another milestone in character creation at The Mill."